


And Just Like the Wounded, and When It's Too Late

by SegaBarrett



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Character Death, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: A study in Troy, and relationships.





	And Just Like the Wounded, and When It's Too Late

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chaosprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaosprincess/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Fear the Walking Dead, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title from "Shot in the Dark" by Ozzy Osbourne. 
> 
> !!Warnings!!: Child death, parent death, alcoholism, verbal child abuse (with sexual abuse connotations), neglect.

He never really thought she was bad, or dangerous, and he was sure she wasn’t either one. His father wasn’t, either.

And Jake, Jake just always said that he wanted to help. He’d have his lips curled up into a frown when he said it, though, and he never told people that Troy was his brother if he didn’t have to.

Troy figured it out, of course, it was a small town and the ranch was an even smaller part of it; everyone seemed to know about it, though.

Troy’s earliest memory was opening his eyes and just seeing darkness around him. He wasn’t afraid, of course, but he wondered when the darkness would go away, when someone would open the door and let in a little light.

He plopped down on the basement floor, clasped his hands together, and waited.

***

Troy thought his mother was pretty, in a different kind of way. He had seen her smile, once, and her eyes had been bright and blue and he had wanted to take a picture of her and examine it later. For science.

When Troy went to school, he looked in wonder at all the little heads sitting behind desks, staring up at the teacher, like they were all puppets on tiny strings that someone kept plucking.

He lasted four years.

When Troy was nine, a bigger kid walked up and shoved him against a locker, pressed up against his back and whispered, “What are you going to do, retard?”  
Troy cocked his head to the side and a little half-smile crossed his face.

He mainly remembered how the blood smelled like metal and how it took an hour to wash all of it off, and the sound of his mother shrieking in the background.

“I guess Troy won’t be going back to school,” Big Otto had said, fixing a glance at Jake.

“You’re not going to take me out, too, are you? All because of him?”

“You can go back, Jake. We need one – for the days ahead. But Troy’s… got a different path. If anyone asks about him, you say he’s in the hospital.” 

“But I didn’t get hurt,” Troy offered, holding up his unblemished hands.

“Not that kind of hospital,” Big Otto muttered.

***

Troy was ten when his mother got pregnant again. 

“I can’t believe I have to stop drinking, and you can do whatever you want!” she screamed at Big Otto. 

“Oh shut up,” he replied, “My head’s killing me.” 

After a few days, though, she had calmed down. She was quiet and sat down next to Troy on a bench near the edge of the ranch, not far from a little stream. 

“Hi, Troy,” she said. “What are you up to?”

“Experiments,” he told her. He skipped a rock across the stream and watched it ripple.

“You know I’m going to have another baby.”

“Uh huh.”

Troy didn’t really understand why she would want to do that, when she didn’t like him or Jake much anyway. Maybe she had liked Troy when he was a baby. 

“And I want you to promise to protect her, okay? No matter what happens.”

“I promise… Mom.” 

She hugged an arm around Troy’s shoulder.

“That’s my good boy.”

***

“You can’t be serious,” Troy heard Jake shouting at Big Otto. “You shouldn’t have him anywhere around her.”

“It’s what Tracey wants. So just be quiet… I have a killer hangover. I’m going back to bed.”

Troy was sitting on the bench, cradling the tiny thing in his arms, hands brushing over her tiny cheeks. 

“Hi, Ariel. I’m Troy.”

Jake walked by them and he stopped, leaning in to speak almost into Troy’s ear.

“Well, we all know how this is going to end, don’t we? Don’t expect me to clean it up.” 

***

Ariel was five and walking and running and ready for the apocalypse. She wore her hair in two pigtails and spent all of her time with Troy.

“You have to be nicer to all the animals, Troy,” Ariel would criticize, befriending the groundhogs and the chipmunks and, yes, a whole family of wild rabbits. “You can’t scare ‘em, you have to be nice.”

And she would look at him with big eyes that knew he would try to listen. Jake was away at college, sending back copies of all his reports marked with A’s, perfect 4.0’s in manila envelopes and letters saying he would stop home eventually. He mentioned that his next plan was law school. 

Troy put Ariel on the bus to school every morning and made her breakfast. Life was going to be okay. If this was forever in the apocalypse, Troy was okay with that.

***

He awoke to a scream one morning and rushed out with the shotgun against his shoulder, ready to attack. 

There was no enemy to fight.

“She must have gotten up early and tried to go swimming in the lake,” Big Otto told Troy, “Wasn’t anything you could have done.”

“But I’m teaching her how to swim,” Troy protested, “She can’t…”

And Tracey fixed him in a look that told him that she’d rather it be him at the bottom of the lake instead.

***

It was two weeks later that Tracey collapsed into her bed. The doctor who came out said it was liver failure, only time would tell, stay sober and go to a hospital.

“Fuck the hospital,” Tracey told them, “I’ll stay right here and die then.”

***

Troy woke every morning as dawn broke, going to Tracey’s side and giving her a glass of water, combing her hair and helping her into a hot bath. 

He’d wash her without comment as she spat, “Yeah, look at me, huh Troy? Not like you’ll ever get this far with a woman again. Why don’t you just let me die, just leave me out in a field and walk away! It’s what you want to do, anyway!”

Troy wouldn’t speak, would simply finish his task, brush and comb her hair again, dress her and set her back in bed, turn off the light and sit on the bench outside.

***

“Troy, you had better hurry your ass up right this minute, I’m thirsty!” 

“Troy, you worthless piece of shit, I should have thrown myself down the steps rather than have you!”

“Troy!”

“Troy!”

“Troy!”

Like clockwork, he came, sweeping up, putting a cold rag on her head, suggesting that maybe the hospital wasn’t such a bad idea.

She pushed the picture of the five of them off the nightstand and Troy listened to it crack. 

She grabbed his hand.

“You forgive me, don’t you Troy? You’re the only one who won’t ever leave me, right Troy?”

***

Troy threw the sheets into hot water and then into the trash. The smell would never come out; it wasn’t worth it. Who would really want to sleep on them anyway?

The ranch was quieter without Tracey barking orders all over the place. Troy decided he liked that.

He had to, after all.

***

When he saw Madison and Alicia, his eyes went blurry. 

Sure, Madison’s hair was blonde while his mother’s had been more of a dusty, dirty blonde, and Alicia was older than Ariel ever was, but it made sense. He could pretend.

Travis and Nick, though? Troy remembered the little dolls Ariel used to play with, the ones Troy carved for her from the beams that would fall around the ranch, awkward and fragile. 

“A Mommy and Daddy and Sister and Brother,” she would say, and Troy knew she meant him, not Jake who had run away from all of them.

Not an extra father and no extra brother, no new Jake, and it wasn’t like Big Otto would accept Travis anyway.

Maori, he said he was, a warrior race.

Troy knew that warriors made sacrifices all the time. He could understand that.

The new world had to start somewhere.

***

Troy didn’t know what to think when Nick started to sneak away to spend time with him, when he got him high, when he made him feel, bone-chillingly terrified and shattered into a million pieces. 

Troy had always thought he was the dangerous one, but no, Nick Clark could put him to shame. There were things he held in his hand that Troy could never deconstruct in a million years.

“Thank you,” Troy told him, and he meant it. 

He knew then that it was all going to have to end.

He didn’t want it to.

***

Jake was dead, and Troy felt like he had misplaced something, like some part of him is stuck and coming unglued. 

He had always been there, hovering over, looking down. 

Troy couldn’t remember him saying a kind thing, but he blamed himself anyway.

Because Jake would want that.

The destruction of the ranch was inevitable after that.

He needed to bury them all.

***

In the tunnel, he looked at Nick, and felt ready to walk away from all the burning wreckage with him. 

He barely saw Madison with the hammer, was too in shock to feel it connect. _It’s funny,_ he thought to himself, _how it all turned out this way_.

If any of the Ottos deserved to live, he decided, it would have been Ariel standing at the end of it all.

***

He was sucking in water faster than he could get it out again. He wondered how he got there in the way he would wonder about the weather, or what he was going to eat for dinner.

The fear was gone. He could only feel it when Nick was near.

 _Nick._ Was he still waiting for him? Where would he go, anyway?

Maybe he had run. He liked to run, to leap across buildings. Nick had loved comic books as a kid, he’d told him once, he’d hidden them under his bed from Madison and read them by flashlight late at night.

Maybe the comics were what had helped make Nick so much larger than life. 

Troy pulled himself up to the surface and let the ebb and flow of the water bring him to land.

***

A shiver ran through him as he used a conveniently-come-by needle and thread to stitch up his head. Bright blue and hot pink.

Then he began to walk. Nick was out there; he could hear his yell ricocheting off the clouds, into the sky.

If he couldn’t swim, he’d just have to trust the water.

Because he was going to find him. Nothing else would do.


End file.
